Taurus Raging Judge Magnum

Description

The Taurus Raging Judge Magnum is a medium- to large-frame revolver chambered for .45 Colt, .410 or .454 Casull. Taurus says its revolver is properly named the “Judge” because it is the gun most judges choose to conceal under their robes while in court. But the Magnum stands out from the rest because it has a 3” chamber, can fire magnum shells of course, is available with a 3” or 6” barrel, and it’s considered Raging because it holds an extra round.

Features include rubber grips with cushion inserts, Taurus’s lock safety that disables the gun with the turn of a key, fixed sights with a fiber optic front sight that’s brightly colored and easy to see, it is hammer fired and shooters can set the action off with a long pull (double-action) or short pull (single-action). It uses a transfer bar, so the hammer strikes a flat bar that presses the firing pin instead of the hammer striking the firing pin directly. And it has a loaded chamber indicator, which is a thin piece of metal that pops up when the weapon is loaded.

Editor Review

I thought the original Judge was strange enough and then the folks at Taurus clipped some steel off the end of the barrel, a bit of the handle, and created the pseudo compact Public Defender, which made the already limited Judge relatively useless.

Taurus seems to have been paying attention to the criticism though. A more common complaint being that The Judge relies too heavily on the deceptively underpowered, 2.5” .410 shells. The other is that The Judge is not a practical concealed carry gun—not even The Public Defender.

So they came out with The Raging Judge Magnum with more ammunition options. The Raging Judge shoots .45 Colt, .454 Casull, 2.5” .410s, and high brass 3” .410s. And the gun holds six shots, instead of five, like the standard Judge.

And Taurus makes it clear that this gun is not designed for concealment because its been beefed up substantially. This model has a 6” barrel and weighs in at 72.7 ounces—that’s four-and-a-half pounds of gun before you load it, which is good, well, great actually because the .454 round is very powerful and kicks like a mule. The extra weight helps reduce recoil considerably.

Compared to other Judges, The Raging Judge Magnum is much scarier looking, but I still have a hard time taking it seriously because it’s not accurate—not at all. While The Raging Judge Magnum has a longer barrel and is more accurate than the others, the extended length of the chamber adds more than an inch of smooth bore travel before the .45 or .454 bullet is forced into the rifled barrel, so the bullets function more like slugs from a shotgun.

In my previous reviews of various incarnations of The Judge, I found little use for the gun besides shooting snakes. And the Raging Judge is no different—except it’s better at shooting snakes because I can place the .410 shot in, at least, the general vicinity of my target. Still, I wish they would make a smoothbore .410 revolver (and, while I am wishing, I wish that such a gun would be legal). That would be so much easier.

The folks at Taurus are so proud of this basic level of performance that they have designed The Raging Judge Magnum so you can attach a scope. I can only assume that they think you might hunt with the thing, which is hilarious. The only way you could ever hunt with this gun is by stealth and subterfuge. Even with a scope, I’d still ike to be within five feet of an animal before I pulled the trigger.

But the name is catchy—The Raging Judge Magnum—perfect for the next Clint Eastwood film. Too bad the gun is not much more than a prop.